E3 2005: Star Wars BattlefrontII

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A new look at a new hope.

By Steve Butts

Ivan's already brought you some thorough hands on impressions of the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront II but we managed to get another look at the game at E3 this year and clarify a few points. One thing we learned was that the original Battlefront was so successful that the team is interested in expanding the game in nearly all areas. Beyond including new levels set in the Death Star, Jabba's Palace and Princess Leia's corvette, there's loads of new gameplay to explore as well.

The Jedi system has been fleshed out a little more since we saw it last. We didn't get an official confirmation of which Jedi will be in the game but you can assume that most of the characters from the canon will be in. I wouldn't rule out a fight between Obi Wan and Darth Vader on the Death Star for instance.

In the mission where the stormtroopers overtake Princess Leia's corvette, Darth Vader will become a playable character once the stormtroopers eliminate all the rebel troopers in a certain area. At that point one player can assume the role of Darth. Who gets the chance to play as the big, bad bossman can be set by the server. It can either be set as a first-come, first-served basis or reserved for the highest or lowest scoring players.

We also found out about the new class, the commander. On the Clone side, this is represented by the Clone Commander. This new class is intended to encourage teamplay by conferring considerable defensive bonuses to nearby teammates. The game's new space engineer class can also be useful in repairing damaged components on the new ships.

As far as console-specific information goes, we know that the new PC of Battlefront will offer stats for multiplayer and an unlocked framerate. It will offer support for 64 players. On the PS2 gamers will be able to play 24 players online. The Xbox version of the game will offer 32 player support over Live and will work on Live in splitscreen mode as well. Offline the game supports 4 player splitscreen.